Tim Miller (2:38)

You have nothing to apologize for.

Derek Thompson (2:39)

I was coming off of a connecting flight. I had a sit at O'Hare for like nine hours in the tarmac. I was feeling pretty punchy. And when I heard these folks essentially cheering the decline of the economy and an impending recession, that's when my head left my body and.

Tim Miller (2:57)

And bulging eyes are noticeable now. Your eyes are definitely a little bit more normal shaped right now. Autarky is my word for the year, though. Ever since that I've been hearing autarky a lot. And it does feel like we're coming back to that so far. Listeners, do you want to educate them on what 19th century autarky was?

Derek Thompson (3:15)

Oh, yeah, sure. 19th century aut. 19th century autarky just basically means you think that your economy should essentially provide everything that people consume in that economy. So all of the avocados that America's eat, they should be grown in the US of A, right? All the bananas that America eat, they should be grown in the US of A. All of the, all the coffee we consume should be grown in the US of A. The problem with that, however, is that I don't know if you've ever seen one of those maps of like where coffee grows. Like, basically none of it grows in within the American border. We kind of have to import.

Tim Miller (3:43)

There's some Duluth beans, like, I don't.

Derek Thompson (3:47)

Know, I haven't checked in on Northern Minnesota and the quality of their chocolate and coffee doesn't seem quite tropical, but maybe give it 35 years. So, yeah, you don't want autarky. It's really cool when you can drink coffee from Colombia and Indonesia and have apples and bananas that are grown in other countries that we buy and then we give money to those countries and then they get richer and we get delicious fruit. Right? Trade is good. Trade is positive sum. But this is an administration that does not believe in the concept of positive sum engagements. And so apparently this is an administration that believes that we should source all of our own coffee.

Tim Miller (4:22)

I have a social science question for you that's related to this, to the economy, because the thing that's been most bewildering to me, that's related to your rant. It's like, the finance crowd is still pretty sanguine, right? I mean, there was a moment there where. What did Trump say? They got the yippies or something?

Derek Thompson (4:40)

They got the yips? Yeah.

Tim Miller (4:41)

They got a little yippee and they got a little yippie for a minute. But the market's basically back to where it was not on Inauguration Day, but on Liberation Day. It's kind of gained back its monthly yips. I've been consuming more CNBC lately. I was not watching you live, which I regret in that moment. But you do hear a lot of post hoc rationalization for all this stuff happening, and I don't quite get it. I feel like if this was Bernie Sanders doing the exact same policy, CNBC would be people on fire throwing pots and pans at each other. I think it would be insane. Everybody would be having a total meltdown in the business world, and that's not happening. Do you have a theory on why that is?

Derek Thompson (5:29)

Yeah, I think a little bit of it is fear. Trump has shown very clearly that if he doesn't like you or your institution, whether you're a university or a law firm or a media company, Paramount, 60 Minutes, he's going to come after you. He's going to treat you unfavorably, especially if you're interested in doing business that the government has some say over. You know, like Paramount, for example, wants to execute a merger. And so there's a thinking that they're getting a little bit more involved in their news coverage to make sure that they're news divisions. Don't piss off Donald Trump, who then will put pressure on the DOJ to not allow Paramount to go through with its merger. There's a lot of fear that this guy is vindictive and incredibly petty and that his politics is highly interpersonal rather than institutional. And so you don't want to get cross with him. I do think that a little bit of that is definitely happening. I also, to your point that, like, this just makes absolutely no effing sense. He just said, was it yesterday, the day before that Americans are just going to have to accept that they can't buy all the dolls that they want to buy. An enormous number of dolls that baby girls in this country get. I've got one 20 months old come from China. China, I think, makes 90 to 95% of the imported toys that Americans buy every single year. So if you're going to raise tariffs by 145% on everything coming from China, that means a lot more expensive baby dolls. What Trump was saying Is, hey, it's no big deal. It's patriotic. Buy fewer dolls, pay more for the dolls, it's gonna go down great. I was like, wait, pause. At least three things. One, to your point. Imagine if President Sanders or President AOC said it's patriotic America for you all to spend 3x on toys. We're just going to raise the cost of toys in this country by a factor of three. That's patriotic. You would have an absolute backlash. I mean, this is obviously a kind of state controlled economy that's incredibly reminiscent of precisely the kinds of socialism that a lot of Americans despise.

Tim Miller (7:31)

I mean, the Jesse Waters show that he'd be hosting it from inside FAO Schwartz.

Derek Thompson (7:36)

Yes.

Tim Miller (7:36)

You know, like he'd have a whole doll, you know, set up all behind him, kind of like pti, but instead of the heads, he would have a.

Derek Thompson (7:43)

Lineup of cute little girls, one after another, just crying, crying, crying about the fact that their baby dolls are no longer being imported from China. I mean, you would have, I think, a very glitzy, highly dramatic and highly catastrophic recording from Fox News about how President Aoc is destroying American childhood. And here's President Trump elected in an affordability election. Right. The number one thing that people who switched the Democratic to Republican column said about the election was life is unaffordable. Bragging about the fact that toys are gonna be twice to three times more expensive under him. So that's number one, that if you just replace the letter after the name, it's just wild. Think what the reaction of Fox News would be to Trump announcing that toys are more expensive. That's number one. Number two, this is just so effing stupid. The strategy that's being communicated here is that we have to raise tariffs on China and other countries in order to reshore manufacturing of goods that are critical to our national security. ELSA dolls are not critical to our national security. It's totally fine if they're cheap. And like, there's no part of the semiconductor manufacturing process that flows through the manufacturing of ELSA dolls. It's totally orthodox, orthogonal. You don't need to bring back advanced robotics and say, step one, we have to make sure that all the ELSA dolls are made in America. Completely different thing. And then the final thing is that this really, truly does scale, I think, across all of Trump's policies, that if you hear the stated reason for the policies and then you look at the inputs, they've nothing to do with one another. Like one other quick nerdy example, a lot of Trump folks say they want to Bring back nuclear power to America. We want to build some nukes. That's a manly thing to do. Creates a lot of energy. 1950s economy. Let's bring back the nuclear power plants.

Tim Miller (9:29)

Hell, yeah. I'm for that.

Derek Thompson (9:30)

I'm for that, too. I would love to have more abundant clean energy in this country. Sorry, we're not going to skip ahead to that bit. Yeah, you got it.

Tim Miller (9:38)

Love a little ding or something. When you say when either we say we're a bulwark against something Trump is doing, or we need a more abundant thing. We'll just have a little. Jason, put in a sound effect.

Derek Thompson (9:47)

Yeah, we'll see if we can get a little tic tac toe here. What do you do, what do you do at the federal policy level if you want to build more nuclear power plants? Well, nuclear power is literally the most expensive thing you can build. I believe one person told me that the last nuclear power plant that America built cost 12 times more than the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. You need billions and billions of dollars filled nuclear power. And the only game in town that is lending that kind of money over the time horizon that's needed to build is the Department of Energy loan programs, office lpo. We're getting a little bit nerdy, but this is important.

Tim Miller (10:21)

Okay. No, let's do it.

Derek Thompson (10:22)

If you wanted to build nuclear power in this country, the first thing you'd want to do is to supersize the lpo. Make sure it was working at absolutely top notch efficiency. What does Doge and the Trump administration do? They dismiss 60% of the LPO team. So it's again, the same way that you have Donald Trump saying we have to assure advanced American manufacturing. And also, by the way, we're taxing baby dolls. You have an administration that's saying we want to build nuclear power, and also we're going to destroy the most important institution for financing nuclear power. Again and again, the outcomes are just completely disconnected from the process.

Tim Miller (11:04)

I want you to assess what you think is happening a little bit more broadly in the economy here, because there are a couple. You know, we're getting a little bit of some mixed signals. I mean, as I mentioned, it's kind of a straight. I guess market stability is not the right word because there's been kind of a lot of volatility, but within a band. Right. Meanwhile, my colleague JVL yesterday is writing that the Trump recession's already here. People just haven't realized it yet. We shrank 0.3%. We'll probably shrink next quarter and 2/4 of shrinkage and GDP is a recession. You wrote something alarming is happening in the job market for the Atlantic, which we'll get into. But we had a job report this morning, pretty good. I guess we gained 177,000 jobs. It wasn't amazing. Job report, wasn't recession. Job report. How do you match all that stuff, the warning signs in the economy with the kind of stability in the top line stuff?

Derek Thompson (11:53)

Yeah, I think the first thing to say is, look, things are changing constantly. And so if you have one theory about the economy and you're just grasping it with white knuckles, you're probably not paying attention to what's happening.

Tim Miller (12:05)

You'll be right eventually, though. It'll come around soon.

Derek Thompson (12:06)

You'll be right eventually. If you grasp for 15 years, maybe the economy will through your thesis. So if you look at a couple of things happening. Yeah, they don't entirely make a clean amount of sense. Right. As you said, the stock market, which I consider a pretty high quality gauge of real time information, is right back to where it was on April 2nd. Right, right back to where it was on Liberation Day, which seems to suggest, just from that indicator that the market is somewhat shrugging off the effect of tariffs. Now, the market knows a lot, so to speak, which is crazy because we.

Tim Miller (12:37)

Currently are essentially in a trade embargo with our biggest trading partner. I mean, I realize we brought back a lot of the other tariffs, but anyway, continue.

Derek Thompson (12:44)

And the average tariff rate is extremely high on this country. So on the one hand, I think you've got the market saying, I think we can weather this. Now here's the next shoe to drop. A lot of folks who are pretty read up on supply chains say that trade has shut down with China to the extent that the container ships that are currently crossing the Pacific and will be unloaded at docks across the country, those are significantly down from where they were a month, three months, 12 months ago. Which means that we could see very soon shortages and price hikes as Americans go to stores, the Home Depot, FAO, Schwartz, Target, Walmart, and realize that for every 100 items that might have existed six months ago in stock, there's only going to be 60 or 50. So those shortages are about two to three weeks away. And I think the market is just sort of holding on and waiting to see what happens when the tariffs really bite the supply chain. There's another thing that's happening that you teed up, which is that the labor market is starting to show some, some interesting signs of Possibly weakening. And this kind of goes back a few quarters. You're absolutely right. We're talking at 12:13pm Friday. We just had a jobs report about four hours ago which indicated just under 200,000 new jobs being created. That's decently healthy. But one thing that I've been looking at is the unemployment rate for new college graduates, which I've read from a bunch of different indicators, seems to be weakening. The New York Federal Reserve keeps a pretty steady survey on the unemployment rate for recent college grads and found that it recently spiked to about 6%, its highest in a long time. And what we're seeing, this is what the article that I wrote about in the Atlantic was, was, was really focused on, is this disconnect where recent grads are doing significantly worse than the overall job market rather than like 10, 15 years ago doing significantly better. Something weird has happened in the job market for recent grads. It might have to do with the fact that a lot of companies are just freaked out about the tariffs and they're like, I'm not going to hire young people because that's an expensive investment. In the long term, it could be just a couple weird things compiling in the economy like the long term decline of the college premium and a little bit of uncertainty about the future. It also could be, and this was the last theory that I had in the piece. I look at generative AI. I think this is an incredibly powerful tool. It is very good at reading, at synthesizing, at putting together reports, at giving you 10,000, 15,000 word documents with deep research that tell you all about a certain industry. It's good at doing a lot of the things that we frankly ask of 22 to 25 year old recent college graduates, right? Like what do these typical people do? They become paralegals. They work for consulting firms, they work for publishing houses. And I'm looking for that indicator that suggests that some white collar firms are replacing college graduates with machines. And I don't think that I have the slam dunk facts to back up the case that right now, today we're looking at major substitution of machines for people. But I think this would be the indicator to look at rising unemployment among college grads.

Tim Miller (16:01)

Good news for certain people is that the AI revolution is not going to be a problem for VCs. But we're going to talk about that in a second. I want to just go a little bit deeper on China and what's happening with, with the trade war and the ships my buddy John McCormack wrote about. He interviewed somebody who's a small business owner here who like has goods on ships that are currently coming from Asia and he want and he's like, I hope the ships sink. He's like, for the business to survive, I need the ships to sink because I can't pay the tariff on the goods. As soon as they the port here, I'd rather just lose all the goods. So that's how dramatic it is. I do wonder again, putting a finer point on it. I don't really get why the market isn't worse given the China trade rate. Maybe there's an assumption it'll go away. If you have any other thoughts on that, I'll take them. But in addition, you also wrote an article recently about the trade war and you mentioned the toys. But there's just a lot of other elements to this and thinking about who is more resilient between us and China in the short term. Right. Because Scott Besant was out making the case last weekend basically that China's going to blink because they can't sustain this quasi embargo that we have. And I certainly think there'll be some pain in China. But reading your article, I'm not sure that that is the bet I would make if I was the U.S. treasury Secretary. I'm curious your take on all that.

Derek Thompson (17:23)

Yeah, let's talk about the stock market first and then I'll do some commentary on China. It's a classic and famous fool's errand to try to explain the stock market with a simple story. Because the stock market is this aggregate of thousands, millions of people around the world making a bunch of different decisions about what they think the future is going to be. And the fact I would say that that aggregate has moved the stock market up in the last two weeks suggests to me one of two things or the following two things. Number one, that people think that Trump is becoming more like a typical corporate Republican, that if you compare what he is saying and what Besant is saying to what happened on April 2, the direction we are moving in is a direction from wild and crazy Trumpism to something a little bit more like Mitt Romney ism. Now, as you said, tariffs are still 10% around the world and still 145% on China. But now we're talking about free trade deals. We're talking about getting China to the bargaining table. And I think there's just a lot of crossed fingers out there in the investing community that eventually this is going to pull us back toward the world we had on March 30th rather than the world we had on April 3rd. That's my guess.

Tim Miller (18:36)

Good luck, guys.

Derek Thompson (18:37)

And good luck. Right. And look, we're just going to know a lot more in two weeks, right? All these supply chain experts I've spoken to that the folks at Bloomberg constantly talk to, they say it's really the middle end of May where we're going to begin to see the kind of shortages that are just inevitable with tariffs this high in our largest or second largest trading partner. So the real conversation to have about this probably isn't May 2, it's June 2, but we'll see what happens in a month. On China, I think it's really important to observe that while the US Is the richest country in the world, the largest economy in the world, if you're just judging an economy based on what it makes, no one comes anywhere close to China. China makes 70% of the world's cement and steel. Right. 90% of our toy imports, 80% of electric vehicle exports. It's just an enormous export juggernaut.

Tim Miller (19:34)

99% of child safety seats. Yeah. In your article, two child safety seats.

Derek Thompson (19:37)

With hard plastic shells, I believe was the line item in the Excel chart that I read.

Tim Miller (19:42)

Natalist around here as JVLs and NATO's. That's doesn't seem great to, you know, be putting to putting an embargo on child safety seats, but what do I know? Maybe we're going back.

Derek Thompson (19:51)

We're going back, dude. This is the point that I forgot about what to make when I was talking about Trump and the dolls. I mean, it's not very pronatalist to brag about the fact that you are purposely raising the cost of toys and dolls while at the same time saying the number one job for this administration is to make it easier and cheaper to have a family. Like you're clearly not doing that. But on China, you know, my fear is that they simply make a lot of everything that the world wants. And the world needs cement and the world needs steel and people want to drive cars and they want to use the robotics to come out and the electronics that come out of China. And so if the US doesn't buy those toasters and doesn't buy those toys and coloring books, you know, my feeling is that China is going to find other trading partners and that they have a political system that is not exactly democratic, which means it is insulated from the short term pressures to, to modify policy in the face of a trade war. So for a lot of reasons, I am extremely pessimistic about the prospects of America having a trade war with China, despite the fact that I'm incredibly patriotic about wanting to build a lot of the advanced manufacturing products that even conservatives say they want to get out of this plan.

Tim Miller (21:04)

Again, there's just no connection, as you meant, to the top.

Derek Thompson (21:06)

Exactly.

Tim Miller (21:07)

Like tariffing child safety seats is not going to create a semiconductor industry. Here, I've got here you had a podcast about science cuts, the crisis in American science. It's called My note here is this Crisis in American Science. Let Derek Cook.

Derek Thompson (21:24)

Okay, yeah, it's actually, it's the longest podcast we've ever done. It's three interviews over two hours. And look, science is incredibly important to me. I am obsessed with the idea that most Americans and most American politicians severely underrate how important science is to progress. I mean, one of the most important reasons why Americans live longer today than they did 30, 40, 50 years ago is because of advances in cardiovascular medicine and cancer medicine and Alzheimer's that we've come up with in the last few decades. And that requires an enormous investment in science. $50 billion is spent through the NIH to help some of the smartest researchers in America and therefore in the world, investigate the most important unknown questions in science. And right now, the Trump administration is essentially trying, it seems to me, to destroy that. Right. They're proposing budgets to cut 40% of the NIH and 50% of the national Science Foundation. You could say, theoretically. Oh, well, they're just trying to target the bad projects that are being done by only, like, ho hum scientists, the good projects we're going to hold on to. But don't you think there's a lot of good scientists at, say, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern? Well, we're also attacking those schools directly and withholding, in some cases, all of our grant spending from those schools, forcing hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts from our most advanced research centers. I mean, my big take here is if in a parallel universe, we lost a war to China in January 2025 and we had assigned like an article of surrender akin to the Treaty of ver in 1919. Like China would force us to spend 50% less on science. China would force us to become an enemy of all of our trading partners. China might force us to pay more for manufacturing imports. China would force us to do all these things that we're choosing to do for ourselves. So we're essentially signing our own article of surrender against China, against the world, and frankly, against ourselves. Because at the end of the day, it kind of doesn't matter who comes up with the next breakthrough drug in cancer. If Americans can use it, they benefit from it. But if you cut cancer research by 50%, you're taking away half your bets on the biggest breakthrough in cancer. So I think this is truly one of the most fundamentally inexplicable policies we're seeing today with a gauntlet of inexplicable policies. I think it just goes to show the stage, the sadness, the depressing fact that if you make hating your opposition the core of your political identity as hating libs and progressives is so clearly the core of maga conservatism, you're going to cut off your nose to spite your face. And the NIH is just an unbelievably important and cherished institution, and we're essentially destroying it for the purpose of owning the libs. That makes absolutely no sense to me. And it's a crisis and I think it could unfortunately turn out to be a tragedy because the cost is not just to projects that are going on right now. If you cut NIH by 50%, you're interrupting the NIH funded careers of tens of thousands of scientists who could be the Nobel prize winning geniuses of the2030s. We just won't know if we don't invest in their education today.

Tim Miller (24:53)

Were there any specific anecdotes over the course of the two hours that really jumped out at you as far as alarming things that we're losing that are being stopped, that are in progress?

Derek Thompson (25:02)

Yeah, yeah, great question. To me, the story that really shows not only the cruelty but also the ineptitude of these cuts is that in mid April, it was reported by Science Journal and the New York times that the NIH was going to cut, by some extraordinary number, 70 to 80%. The longest and oldest longitudinal study of women's health. I believe it's called the Women's Health Initiative. This is the longest and largest study of women's health. We were just going to destroy it, right? Maybe because it had like a gender term in the title or something. So science reaches out to the Department of Health and Human Services and they say, we're going to look into it. And 72 hours later, so embarrassed by the fact that for no seeming good reason, they've attacked women's health. HHS backtracks. Okay, so far so good. You could say the media served as a watchdog and saved this all powerful program. But then 24 hours later, RFK comes out and now with those cuts reversed, he accuses the New York Times of lying about the original cut now that they've reversed the cut. Right. This is the level of dishonesty and the level of lack of care that you have to assume is being applied to every single science cut across the system. Right. If this is how stupid and dishonest the cuts are to one program we identified, imagine the stupidity and Dishonesty multiplied across $15 billion of cuts to science, which are touching everything from cancer research, brain cancer research, Alzheimer's research, ALS research. I mean, it's just ludicrous that we're destroying these programs. And for what? To own the libs? To express to Harvard our displeasure with their diversity programs. It's just terrible. I think that we're essentially trying to wage a kind of ideological war against American academia and just burning science in the interim.

Tim Miller (27:16)

Okay, onto the, I guess, kind of related science future of everything. Derek, I do want to get back to the AI question. I was listening to one of your podcasts recently, kind of about a. That was about like the AI industry and business, like what's being invested in. You're talking to an expert on that and I'm curious, like, where you think things are going, like what the speed is and you know, how that also kind of relates to all these questions about having potentially the stupidest people in the world in charge of regulating it.

Derek Thompson (27:46)

AI is such an interesting industry where many of the people who are most optimistic about the growth of the technology are also very pessimistic about what that optimism means, if you know what I mean. Right. Like most of the time when someone's like a huge booster for say, self driving cars is because they think Waymo.

Tim Miller (28:06)

Is cool and it's going to be awesome for everybody. We're going to have fewer deaths, traffic deaths. You can multitask. Yeah, exactly.

Derek Thompson (28:13)

Right. They're predicting the fast growth of Waymo because they're fans of Waymo. AI is one of the only industries I know where many of the people predicting its fastest rates of growth are also terrified by the fastest rates of growth. And so I think it's important to remember that because this industry is just not like other industries.

Tim Miller (28:32)

It's not just Sam Altman. It's not just spin artists that are saying that the growth is happening rapidly.

Derek Thompson (28:37)

It's just obvious. Well, look, you look at how much companies like Google or Meta is spending on AI infrastructure. It's not like one or two billion dollars a year. It's on the order of 60 to 70 billions of dollars a year per company. Hundreds of billions of dollars every single year are being plowed into this technology. They're not doing it for kicks. Right. We're talking about Apollo program style investments in a technology that each of these companies think is going to help make them a multi trillion dollar company. In many cases they are, I suppose, multi trillion dollar companies. So let's say, you know, deca trillion dollar companies. Here's one thought I have about AI. I think that with every technology there's a lag between what the technology can do and its actual use and its effect on the macroeconomy. That's one of the reasons, Tim, why I was saying I'm really interested in finding, identifying what's the economic indicator that's going to tell us we've hit an inflection point. I think it's recent college grad unemployment because I am concerned that These tools generative AI ChatGPT Claude are just really, really good at the stuff that we ask of 23 year old graduates of Georgetown. But in the long run I think this story could get very, very weird.

Tim Miller (30:01)

I mean, listening to Mark Zuckerberg talk about the fact that people only have three friends, but then he's going to give them 12 new AI chatbot friends to make up the gap between how many friends you need to be happy and how many friends you actually have, that's pretty fucking weird. Just to start, I'm like, no thanks. Actually on the 12 Mark Zuckerberg AI bot friends. I don't know that that's going to lead to a healthy society. That's just me.

Derek Thompson (30:23)

Maybe it won't lead to a healthy society. I don't think so, but I do think it's going to happen. So let me give you two long term predictions in very different categories. One sort of in changes to social life and the other in geopolitics changes to social life. There are companies like Character AI that already have tens of millions of users who are just chatting to an AI bottle all day long. Your face is being held depressingly in your hands internally. I want you to know that I am also holding my face depressingly in my hands. I think this is not only pathetic in a small way, but also sad in a very profound way.

Tim Miller (31:05)

Anti human, I don't know. Anti human, anti social care about humans.

Derek Thompson (31:09)

Let me just try to explain why I think this is happening and why I think it's going to grow in a way that I hope people don't intuitively think. Think of as me endorsing this prediction as being good for the human race.

Tim Miller (31:20)

Got it.

Derek Thompson (31:21)

Think about your relationship Phenomenologically your relationship with people in your life who don't live around you. Right. You text with them, right? Yeah. In a way, those relationships exist in blue bubbles on your phone. And you think about the fact that young people today who are being handed their first phone when they're whatever, 9, 10 years old, think of friendship as being something that in many cases, or human relationship is being something that in many cases, almost purely a relationship between you looking at a pane of glass and seeing and then blue bubbles appearing. Is it really so different to just text an AI all day long if that AI responds immediately, always validates your feelings, always has consideration for your deepest and darkest fears, is trained precisely to tell you how smart and good and right you are about all of your worries and all the people you hate. There's a way in which what I've said before, before we build like a superintelligence of iq, we'll have accidentally built a superintelligence of EQ that in many ways a lot of things that people want from relationships are actually kind of computationally shallow. Right. They want validation, they want responsiveness, they want to feel better. They want to feel maybe like they've made something else feel something. But that can be engineered as well. The AI could simply say, that's a wonderful point. I feel much better now.

Tim Miller (32:54)

This is not a fulfilling relationship, though, Derek. Fulfilling relationships that you have with people, like actual friendships that make you feel good and happy and fulfilled inside, are because you have been through things together. You've had happiness, you had sadness, you've argued. Right. Like all of that is necessary to make a full human relationship.

Derek Thompson (33:14)

You believe that. You believe that and I believe that because we're geriatric millennials. No, in all seriousness, we agree about that point. Think about. But I am not certain you think.

Tim Miller (33:26)

You can have a fulfilling relationship with.

Derek Thompson (33:28)

A. I know for a fact that millions of people are already having fulfilling to them relationships.

Tim Miller (33:34)

They think that they are.

Derek Thompson (33:35)

Oh, sure. I'm using the word fulfilling as it represents their thinking. I don't think it's a healthy relationship. I don't think it scales across society. Well, yeah, I wrote this 8,000 word cover story called the Antisocial Century that includes a 1,000 word section called this is your politics on solitude. And then it was like our AI future. I think this is coming. I think it is going to be a social crisis because many people are going to be seduced by the convenience of AI friendships and thus sacrifice the depth of human friendships. I am deeply, deeply worried about that. So that's piece number one. And that's going to be weird, right? If you think smartphones plus social media are dementing for our mental health or our ability to focus. How about smartphones plus social media plus, plus a roster of AI friends that an entire generation grows up talking to constantly, just as or more often than they talk to their friends. I'm not trying, of course not trying to say, this is good.

Tim Miller (34:39)

So strange that Mr. Abundance, optimist, is turning me into a doomer.

Derek Thompson (34:43)

No, no.

Tim Miller (34:43)

Listening to doomers. Listening to doomers make me feel like an optimist listening to you. And now I'm like, we are so fucking cooked.

Derek Thompson (34:49)

I think of myself as like a scientific optimist and cultural pessimist, Right? I think that, like, science goes like this, it goes up into the left. And if you look in like the last 20 years of culture, like, how could you possibly say, oh, well, you know, Also culture isn't experiencing the exact same rates of progress as, say, you know, computing or medical science. So that's one big prediction is that I am really worried about the social crisis that will be created by the convenience of AI relationships. The other piece I think is really interesting is that eventually the federal government's going to recognize that superintelligent AI is a weapon. If we have a tool that can be used to knock down foreign energy grids or that can be used to knock down ours, that's a weapon. That's a digital bomb. What does the government do with incredibly significant weapons that exist at the frontier of technology like the Manhattan Project? The Manhattan Project was not farmed out to Ford and gm. We didn't let the private sector just like, hey, could you guys just, like, disappear? Try to build a bomb totally outside of government regulations and control and just let us know, Ford, if you happen to succeed in building a nuclear bomb. No, it's entirely centralized within the federal government. It is a federal secret. We go to the middle of New Mexico and pay everyone to not talk to anybody else and entirely control the pipeline.

Tim Miller (36:20)

It's still keeping other countries from getting access to the secret.

Derek Thompson (36:23)

So what happens when the private sector builds a digital nuclear weapon? The debates that we're going to have about the nationalization of AI, those I think are about 18 months away. Real front page of your newspaper. Debates about whether aspects of OpenAI and anthropic and these other companies need to be brought under federal control. That's a conversation that is, I think, practically inevitable once you consider the fact that how are we going to Control information flow. How do we trust private companies to control the possibility that spies from other countries are trying to sleep with them, steal their computers, get their information right. If you take the metaphor seriously, that we are essentially at work on a technology so capacious that it includes the possibility of building a nuclear bomb. Why would we treat the 2020s Manhattan Project as a private enterprise while we treated the 1940s Manhattan Project as a purely federal enterprise? These questions of how to nationalize AI, how to treat superintelligence as a military weapon. I think we're 18 months away from a really, really big national conversation about that.

Tim Miller (37:39)

And the guy maybe who will be at the very center of that conversation, I alluded to earlier, Marc Andreessen. He was the inventor of Netscape, big vc. He was kind of like a typical kind of centrist technocrat, maybe leaning a little right. Silicon Valley guy up until recently when he got red pilled. There's a big semaphore story about how he's in all these group chats and he kept looking for more and more right wing people to get into the group chats with because he kept being annoyed by everybody. He claims to have been radicalized in part by this topic. You're talking about that he had a meeting with somebody at the Biden administration who said that the Biden administration was looking into regulation of AI. He did not want this. This was one of the things that radicalized him. His retelling, his recounting of that meeting feels apocryphal to me or at least exaggerated significantly. But anyway, that's what he says. And just for kicks, before I get your take on Mark and sort of how these guys all interact, I do want to play that audio that I alluded to earlier of him discussing which jobs will still be available once we really kick into high gear with AI. Let's listen to Mark.

C (38:45)

There's an intangibility to it. There's a taste aspect. The human relationship aspect, the psychology, by the way, a lot of it is psychological analysis. Like, who are these people? How do they react under pressure? How do you keep them from falling apart? How do you, you know, how do you keep them going crazy? How do you keep from going crazy yourself? You know, you end up being a psychologist half the time. And so like it, it, it is possible. I don't want to be definitive, but like, it's possible that that is quite literally timeless. And when, you know, when the AIs are doing everything else, like that may be one of the last remaining fields.

Tim Miller (39:16)

That People are still doing that. There is venture capital. So the only thing that the super genius AI won't be able to figure out is early stage investment in startup companies. You need Conehead Marc Andreessen to do that. The AI won't be able to figure it out anyway. Just take any of that that you wish to respond to.

Derek Thompson (39:36)

Look, the truth is, I think he's right about every single thing in that clip. Except for the last sentence, right? Like, yes, there will be lots of jobs available for people. Even in a world in which artificial intelligence is essentially PhD or beyond PhD level smart at every single possible discipline. We will need taste, for example, in music. We'll still listen to human musicians. We'll still eat food that's cooked by human chefs and delivered by human chefs with human line chefs. He said at the end that VCs are basically like therapists. We'll also need human therapists. It's funny that he was like, you.

Tim Miller (40:13)

Know, are you sure?

Derek Thompson (40:15)

Well, look, don't get me too deep into this. I do think that a lot of people will turn to AI therapy, but my hope is that it'll be like a. It'll be a little bit like Jevons paradox, where if the cost of therapy goes down, more people will be asking like therapy, like questions of AI. But fundamentally a lot of them will be like, you know what I really need?

Tim Miller (40:34)

I think we already have too much therapy talk among the Gen Z I. I'm pro therapy, but I'm hearing way too many therapy words out of 13 year olds these days.

Derek Thompson (40:43)

I'm married to a clinical psychologist, so my feeling here is that therapy words are good and they belong in 15 minute therapy sessions and therapy words do not belong as a primary lens for interpreting our politics. I think there's going to be a ton of jobs left for people. Even in a world in which AI turns out to be very, very good at a lot of different things. I'm not worried about full, full unemployment. That said, it's. There are a lot of jobs that have taste and have an element of human to human therapeutizing VCs are probably on that list, but they're not like the final species, like the final cockroach that's going to survive like the nuclear implosion of AI. They're one of like 20,000 jobs that have these features. And that's precisely why I don't think we're entering a world in which humans are fully disemployed.

Tim Miller (41:28)

Have you been as disappointed as I have been in Our masters of the universe in these tech guys. And I feel like if you had come to me 10 years ago and some of our listeners will be like, that's why you're so stupid. 10 years ago, Tim. But if you'd come to me 10 years ago and said, in the future there's a Republican president and it's kind of like a, maybe not the smartest guy in the world, but somebody has a good emotional quality, has a nice ability to reach working class Americans and make them feel like their concerns are heard. And to accommodate for his shortcomings, he's going to bring in the guy that got us to space with SpaceX and the inventor of Netscape and all of these brilliant people that have the inventor of PayPal and like the people that created all this stuff, and they're going to come in and they're going to look at the government and figure out how we can supercharge it and make it more efficient, I think 10 years ago I'd have been like, sign me up for that campaign. Hell yeah. And these guys have been a fucking disaster.

Derek Thompson (42:24)

I mean, everything that you said, imagine if you then told your 10 year ago self and the first cardinal policy that they'll employ in economics is to raise the taxes on Elsa dolls being manufactured in China. It's just so fucking stupid.

Tim Miller (42:43)

It's mind boggling how stupid it is. And none of them have been like, guys, wait a minute, how did we get signed up for this? They got co opted by the idiot.

Derek Thompson (42:51)

Yes.

Tim Miller (42:51)

Like the guy that invented Netscape and the guy that got us into space got co opted by the fucking game show host who bankrupted all the companies. It wasn't the other way around. How did that happen?

Derek Thompson (43:05)

It's funny that you said that, that entire question. I was like, God, I've literally had this conversation to myself in my head. If you had told 2015 Derek that there was a Republican administration and Mark Andreessen and Elon Musk, the 2015 versions of Mark Andreessen and Elon Musk were going to be two of the more important stewards of American science and tech policy. If you asked me what the odds are on us cutting scientific funding by 50%, I'd be like fucking 10,000 to 1. Are you serious? Elon Musk overseeing an effort to cut the NIH by 40%? No way. Cut the NSF, which has a lot of physical world nitty gritty, like physics, science, not this cellular stuff, but just figuring out like the next generation of like energy construction. This is totally like 2015, Elon Musk, shit, we're cutting it by 50%. The Trump nominated director of NSF just left because of what a disaster they're making it. I mean, if, even if you left the tariffs out of it and you said, we're just going to evaluate what these guys are doing to American science with the understanding that it was basic research in American science that built tcpip, the technology that helped make Marc Andreessen a billionaire and that made possible the photovoltaic cell, which is part of what? Well, even before the photovoltaic cell lithium ion batteries, which are core to electric vehicle technology. Basic research made these men billionaires. And then they got power. And they are participants in administration that is destroying the very thing that made their careers possible. It's so strange to me that this is happening. I mean, I understand it's an ideological purge of government. I understand why they're doing it at an interpersonal level, but at exactly the level of abstraction that you pose the question. I am totally fucking flabbergasted.

Tim Miller (45:04)

They've had one policy success. I will say they have supercharged the economy around shitcoins, like fake currency. If you're investing in a cum rocket coin. Like things are going really great right now thanks to Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk's and Donald Trump's influence. The rest of the technology stuff, I don't know. We have to do abundance.

Derek Thompson (45:26)

We did it.

Tim Miller (45:27)

47 minutes. The context of the Democrats. Here's what I want to do. I want to do it in a meta way. I've asked this of several Democratic candidates. I don't know if you've heard this, but not candidates, politicians that have come through. And I'm like, my one critique, my main critique of the Democrats, looking back the last 10 years, maybe not my main critique. Let me be more precise. My main political strategy critique has been that if you look at the Clinton, Biden and Harris campaigns, if you asked 100 people what their main message was, you'd get 100 answers. The Biden campaign, a little bit about the soul of America was a little bit better than the other two on that front. But none of them had a good answer and none of them had anything that could fit on a hat. And that's just bad politics. Forget all the policy stuff. That's just bad politics. And so I've been posing to them. This is something they should probably figure out in case we have another election. And I'm like, there's AOC and Bernie are out There kind of with some sort of this just fight oligarchy. And I was like, these two geriatric millennial nerds. I have a book called Abundance that's offering a different perspective. And those are kind of two ideas that are out there. And there is a very small group of people online that are very committed to the war between these two thoughts. And I don't really even think that. I think that that's imaginary. I think that exists mostly in these people's heads. But I'm wondering kind of what you think about the political overhang of what you wrote in the book.

Derek Thompson (46:58)

So how do I want to frame this? We wrote this book in 2023 and 2024. We added four sentences, maybe, maybe seven sentences in November 2024, after the Donald Trump election. So this is a book that is not about 2025. This is a book about what Ezra and I think is most important in American policy that we hope Democrats focus more on. Housing abundance, clean energy abundance, high quality governance, a science policy that makes sense, and a plan to build what we invent. That's the book in 15 seconds. The reason I wanted to summarize the book is actually put its summary in the refrigerator for a bit while I make a second point. 2026 and 2028 are going to be about Donald Trump. And opposing Donald Trump effectively requires, in addition to understanding the importance of making and inventing more of what you need, the Abundance message, understanding Trump's vulnerabilities, right? You have to pay attention to what he is making vulnerable right now. Donald Trump's vulnerability, I think if the midterm were, say, in three months, is that the man was elected by swingable independents because life felt unaffordable and the first thing he did in office is raise tariffs while collecting billions of dollars in shitcoins. Right? The argument you make is about the affordability of a typical family life juxtaposed with the corruption that this man not only is raising the cost of your child's doll, he's also spending half of his time soaking money, right, Like a vampire squid out of every single possible sycophant he possibly can. That's the message. Affordability plus corruption. The positive vision is, let's make American family life affordable. Not again. But in many cases, for the first time, a new kind of family life that we deserve. In the 2000s and 2000s, that involves building what we know how to build, like houses, involves inventing what we don't know how to build, like cures for diseases that ruin families. But then like, as you know, like, a lot of politics is negative polarization. A lot of politics is watching what the guy in power does and coming up with a very clean message of distinguishing yourself from the fallen incumbent, from the flawed incumbent. Right. And fortunately for Democrats, in a way like Donald Trump is a fucking buffet of items that you can be negatively polarized against. He's doing so many things that are terrible. In a way, the real challenge is figuring out what is the thing you want to focus on. I'm disgusted by the deportation plans. I'm disgusted by the tearing up of constitutional order. There are a lot of good nominations. But. But I would focus on the kitchen table issue, that this is a guy who said he'd make America 2019 again and instead he made America 2020 again. He's making America chaotic. He's making American manufacturers not know what's coming next. And American buyers feel like there's shortages at the places that they're shopping at. I think that's where you would want to sharpen the message. And of course there's ways that abundance plays into this. But I never want to answer questions about like the 2028 election by just like hawking the book that seems dishonest because the book doesn't know what people are really going to care about in three months or three years. And I really want to be clear that effective politics is about paying attention and not white knuckling. Some theory as you move through time and the actual news items, they work to your advantage. Change.

Tim Miller (51:04)

Okay, so just one more on the intra Democrat element because I do think that the way that. But the message you just laid out, right. And I don't know that I totally agree with you on focus on kitchen table issues, but we can argue about that another time. But the argument that you just laid out, right, that let's just take that as the table sticks. A Democratic candidate should be talking about affordability for working people, affordability for everybody, for middle class people. In contrast with the corruption of Trump. And a policy rubric around the affordability message could look like what you guys are putting out. We need to build more, you know, we need to make housing more affordable. We need to invest into the economy. Or it could look like, you know, we need, there need to be more government programs for people. Right? Like that we need to have more assist. There needs to be more assistance. There needs to be more federal assistance. Right? Like there's a way to talk about it by let's grow the pie, make things cheaper or let's figure out a way within the existing pie to to take from the rich folks and give it to the poor folks. These things aren't in total contrast. You can do a little bit of both. But I do wonder if you think that ends up being at the core of the intra democratic argument over the topics that you guys cover in the book.

Derek Thompson (52:20)

Let me answer it this way. Ezra has this charm that I like and we've been on the road long enough that I've begun to absorb some of his language.

Tim Miller (52:27)

He talks about you guys both love the word capacious.

Derek Thompson (52:30)

Thing that I will say, I think that was me.

Tim Miller (52:32)

I watched one interview where you used the word capacious. Like the two of you use the word capacious like seven times in the first 30 minutes.

Derek Thompson (52:39)

I think that might have been me infecting him. So this is an example of the vector going the other way.

Tim Miller (52:43)

Capacious bag. That's the only time that I'll allow it. It's a very capacious bag. I'll take that.

Derek Thompson (52:49)

I love how he sometimes talks about making a cut. I want to make a cut here that I think is really important. I never want pro growth, say Democrats, to position themselves against redistribution, right? That's not the message. The message is that redistribution is good. Helping the poor is good. Right? A moral society should judge itself based on how it cares for and looks out for the most, most vulnerable. But welfare is expensive. Redistribution costs money. It literally is just money. And you know what's really, really good for growing? Your ability to spend money to help the poor. It's growth, right? Being pro growth is being anti poverty and for the marginalized and for those who don't have enough because helping people costs something. And if you have, say, a flat average tax rate and your economy is shrinking, by definition, you have less tax revenue that you can redistribute to those who need it most. If you have a flat tax rate and your economy is growing, by definition, that same tax rate on a higher overall GDP means more money for people who need it. So I think it's really important, especially in an age of high deficits and high interest rates, to say the path toward affording Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security and the earned income tax rate and an expanded child tax rate and even more welfare that we think is important for helping the marginalized. The path toward all of that flows toward growth. So now let's talk about how to grow the economy. Right? That's how I would advise a sort of abundance liberal to deal with this issue. I don't think you want to get but find yourself in trench warfare where you are positioning your argument against welfare. Right. This is a strategy to make it easier for us to afford our generosity to the low income.

Tim Miller (54:56)

It's really wonderful. Do you have any final things you want to riff on? You've got a lot of takes. Anything I didn't ask you about? Do you have any hot takes? NBA playoffs, some other random technology issue.

Derek Thompson (55:04)

When's this podcast coming out? Let's finish on this podcast.

Tim Miller (55:06)

This podcast comes out in three and a half hours, give or take.

Derek Thompson (55:09)

Okay, so we got Game seven Nuggets clips. Who we got?

Tim Miller (55:15)

I'm fucking panicked about it, to be honest. I'm traumatized. This whole season I've been living through the trauma of the Game seven against the Timberwolves last year in the semifinals where they were up 20 in the fucking third quarter.

Derek Thompson (55:28)

In the fourth quarter, sir.

Tim Miller (55:30)

Was it in the early fourth quarter? Yeah. I'm literally on my phone because they're playing Dallas and they're to play Dallas at conference finals. I am on my phone kayaking flights to Dallas because I've got a buddy in Dallas and I'm like, we're up 20. This. We got this thing. And then it was just Jamal Murray became totally incapable of getting around the bigger defenders, the more athletic Timberwolves. And I'm too traumatized by that to predict a duck it's victory until I see it. So, I mean, Nicole Yuk has just been unbelievable and he could certainly will us to victory. But I just, I'm deeply concerned about the team around them. And I think even if they do get through it, it's been a grueling seven game series. And then you just have OKC sitting there waiting for you. And they've. They swept. They've just been sitting around getting healthy. They're younger, they're more athletic, they're deeper. So I don't know. It's going to end sometime. The end is nigh. I hope it's not Saturday, because I would like the pain. Like I kind of want the pain of a lost okc. I want to live through the fire that's part of fandom. That's what I mentioned earlier. That's why you need real human friends. Like you need the suffering to enjoy the success us. But I don't see it happening for us. What do you think?

Derek Thompson (56:42)

I think you're screwed. You either screwed this round or you're screwed the next round. I don't see you guys beating okc. That's for sure. My last question for you, look, you've got the best player in the world. You have maybe the most talented offensive player ever. I mean, I know who Michael Jordan is, but like I've also seen Nikola Jokic and his statistics. I mean, the ability to score with this efficiency and rebound and assist. It's very bizarre to have Bill Russell rebounding magic assisting Michael Jordan level scoring in terms of the numbers and also like weirdly, like Steph Curry ish three point percentages in the seven foot frame. You have the best player in the world.

Tim Miller (57:24)

You can't do the volume on the three point, but the percentages are there. And it's like when he misses, you're shocked. When he misses, you're shocked. I mean, and he has these ridiculous. And it's like he did in game. Was it in game five where he has the a triple axle turnaround sambor shuffle over a seven foot guy from like 16ft. If any other player in the world takes that, you're like, that is the worst shot I've ever seen. And as soon as that went off his hands, I was like, he got this one. I was like, that's it.

Derek Thompson (57:49)

Switch did not touch. I know exactly the shot. It did not touch rim. I don't think it came within somehow 6 inches of any part of the rim. It was literally in the center of the basket. So my last question for you is this. You're the best player in the world. He certainly toured the back half of his prime. You have to take advantage of this.

Tim Miller (58:07)

Yeah.

Derek Thompson (58:08)

What's the one move you make?

Tim Miller (58:11)

He's so magical. It's just I feel so lucky to have been able to, you know, get. Have him as my distraction through the Trump years. Watching 82 games. I think that they, they need more shooting and depth around him. They need another dynamic score. This is the problem with Jamal. And I worry more about Jamal's health and scoring ability and dynamism than I do Jokic. I think that Jokic, if you look at his competitiveness, I think Jokic, I think his prime might continue for quite a while. I don't know. We don't know. I hope so. Maybe not. But I look at Jamal, I'm just worried he does not have the athletic dynamism to compete with Shay and Ant and the other young players. And to me, I kind of, I have a weird view. Like, I think that like Jokic could make people who are other people's problems wonderful if they're dynamic. Like I look at, I'm like looking who are the people that'd be out there on the market, that's somebody else's problem. I look like Trey Young. People be like, come on, you could. You don't. Wouldn't want Trey Young, you know, And I'm like, I think that Trey Young would be unbelievable with Jokic. Just think about how much they would spread the floor out and how much space would get created with somebody like that. I don't know. I think Jokic could have made Zach Levine look great. They just. They need a creator. They need another person that can score and create. And even if they have some other issues, I think Jokic can mask them and they somehow need to be able to build depth. I don't. And I don't know how to do that. Like begging old people to sign for the minimum to come, you know, to come play with him because he's so great. They're in a real tough spot cap wise, but I basically keep Christian Brown and Aaron Gordon in neokichen. Figure and figure it out.

Derek Thompson (59:49)

Yeah, well, the one name you didn't mention is Porter Jr. And you guys are paying him a lot of Money to score eight points in Game 6. And did he have a lot of time? Sort of.

Tim Miller (59:59)

Was a quiet eight.

Derek Thompson (60:01)

Maybe it was eight. I think I looked at the box score at like 4am in the morning, but I think you're pretty much right. You know, look, I think. I think you've got. You've got the most important piece and you don't quite have enough creative scoring and assisting talent around him, which means he's got these usage rates of 33, 37%. I think as he moves into his 30s, you're going to want to bring that down. And I didn't think about someone like Trae Young, who I find incredibly annoying. But as you said, next to Jokic, who knows?

Tim Miller (60:33)

I mean, look at Russell Westbrook. I mean, almost like re energized, rubbing around Jokic. So, I don't know. We will see. Maybe Luka will just make a karmic judgment to the Lakers that they don't deserve this and decide not to sign an extension and come with his Eastern European brethren and decide to create a Slavic super team. Maybe we could do that. I don't know.

Derek Thompson (60:52)

It's beautiful to dream.

Tim Miller (60:53)

Yeah, it is beautiful to dream. Derek Thomas, thank you so much. You make my life easy on this podcast. I appreciate it. Everybody go check out plain English. It is an awesome podcast. And, you know, abundance too. You might have heard about that. We'll be seeing you soon, Derek. Everybody else will be back here on Monday with Bill Kristol. See y'all then. Peace. Peace.

D (61:12)

We're all waiting for the summer? Better times? We don't need nothing to be warm? I can feel myself getting older? Getting colder? So put on your coat now I can see lonely too? You don't need to tell me that I can see the weight you carry on your back? Yes, I'd like to put that down and watch it drown? It must have been love? But you need to learn? To try and learn love again yesterday don't have to be tomorrow? And what about today? Do you need a friend? It feels good for a while? And you're going to have to smile? If you want to love again? Do you need a friend? Sa if you really wanna know I feel me wanna know I Through the day? People come in, people go? But the loneliness is always the same? If you really wanna know? I'm ready Making it through the day? If you really wanna know? How to make it.

Tim Miller (65:11)

The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.